2002 WSP Blue Series

2002

Creating demand for sanitation and hygiene through Community Health Clubs:

Hygiene Promotion in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Behavior Change

Sidibe, M. & Curtis, V.

Hygiene Promotion in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe: New approaches to behaviour change.

Blue-Gold Field Note, Water and Sanitation Program. WSP-Africa Region, World Bank.

Abstract: After years of debate, most people working in water and sanitation now agree that hygiene promotion is vitally important. But even now, many programmes and projects either ignore it or do it badlyThis Field Note describes two African hygiene promotion programmes that have successfully used new approaches: Programme Saniya in Burkina Faso, and ZimAHEAD in Zimbabwe. They have both concentrated on understanding how people actually behave and hence how to change that behaviour. One of them (Programme Saniya) was comparatively small in scale but demonstrated ideas that can be applied at a larger scale. Changing human hygiene behaviour is a long process that is difficult to measure, and both of these programmes still have obstacles to overcome. However, this work indicates that systematic and carefully managed hygiene promotion programmes can achieve improvements in hygiene behaviour and hence reduction in diarrhoeal diseases.